Wednesday, 12 September 2012

If you are better than facebook engineer..than go ahead with HTML5

“When
I’m introspective about the last few years I think the biggest mistake
that we made, as a company, is betting too much on HTML5 as opposed to
native… because it just wasn’t there. And it’s not that HTML5 is bad.
I’m actually, on long-term, really excited about it. One of the things
that’s interesting is we actually have more people on a daily basis
using mobile Web Facebook than we have using our iOS or Android apps
combined. So mobile Web is a big thing for us.”

(maybe people use Web Facebook instead of native version because the previous version was buggy. Changes are hard to made)

I totally agree about HTML5... but I also think that for any app out there, use HTML5 as a one solution for all the mobile platform out there, and as the main platform to build app is a mistake.I don't have a good opinion of HTML5 on mobile, for many reason:

it is a growing and evolving tecnology with a not defined standard: there are 2 standards now..

you lose the link to the hardware and also control, if you need it.

I don't believe personally to solution/framework that can works everywhere.. You need compromise; compromise means poor integration & bad performance and so a bad user experience.

Not all the mobile browsers are the same: on android platform, you can find different browser installed, with different rendering engine. Yes you can choose to support only some browser.. but don't you choose HTML5 because it can runs everywhere?

Javascript performance may differ a lot from a platform to another: means slow speed on some device.

The time spent improving App/OS integration..cost.

No store exist yet... and if it exists.. needs a lot of app that are not native (if not why a user should point to the html5 store?)

it is early: maybe in the future will be the best choice. We don't really know if it will be the best and when.. we know is not now.

It also have good points:

HTML is a good solution for content rendering: if you need to show rich text, with images as an example.

Easy to prototype an app.

and I also don't think to be better than all those nerds engineer at facebook.. so...

PlatformsmatterAs a personal experience IOS and Android have done a lot in terms of HTML5 integration..and they are continuing to do it but it is not enough, at least for now...for an example in these platform you can't access:- camera and than shoot photos (for example no QrCode sorry)- PIM- Media- .. many others thingsI don't have any experience on Windows Phone platform.. so I can't say more about that.

Damn, I want to make an HTML5 appYou have some choices:

if you don't need hardware integration, your app display contents grabbed from a web service.. you can accept UI compromise..performance...and you will package your app inside a WebKit window of a native app.. ok go ahead with your HTML5 app

I have saw enough things of Firefox Mobile OS to say it is not ready, not interesting and it is in a evolving state.. and more important.. may have a 0% market impact when you will see a firefox phone.
It's simple early for Firefox Mobile OS. Someone said Tizen? Same story there.

BlackBerry is pushing a lot their new platform BBOS10, but first of all, they are believing in you, as a developer: pushing a lot of support on forums and social network.

They can't make mistakes (who really can?) for the new platform release (2013) and they have a real HTML5 support on BBOS10! Read More hereThere is a growing community.. so if you choose to develop for HTML5, it is time to choose BBOS10.